THE LIVERGOOD FAMILY ASSOCIATION held its seventeenth annual reunion at Warwick, Rhode Island, September Twenty-seventh, Nineteen Hundred and Five, Mr. Fred R. Livergood of Warwick, President, presiding. The morning session was called to order at 9:33 o’clock after repeated raps of the gavel, due to an unwillingness on the part of several Livergoods by marriage to suspend their conversations, having never before attended a Livergood Family Association Reunion and being largely ignorant of its serious purpose and solemn nature. One must also indict Professor Elisha Livergood for his disruptive absence. Professor Livergood was tarrying in the corridor and could be heard, along with two attendees from the female branches, Messrs. Gleason and Looney, singing “In Zanzibar, My Little Chimpanzee” (although my husband contends that the song was “Won’t You Fondle Me?”—the two songs sounding to my ear not a bit similar and my husband being deliberately perverse).
REV. ABNER HOADLEY, DD, Pastor of the West Warwick Congregational Church, offered the Invocation.
MRS. MARY BLUNT LIVERGOOD of Kingston, Rhode Island, sang a song that she and her husband Chester had written about the Livergood family, entitled “O Joy! O Bliss! O Livergood!”, which included a brief musical interlude on the harp played by Miss Annie Capwell, whose claim to Livergood family affiliation is still under advisement by the Committee of Ancestry Eligibility. For this reason she was asked not to play too overtly.
PROFESSOR ELISHA LIVERGOOD, chairman of the Committee of Publication of the Revised Genealogy, informed attendees of the near completion of the latest edition of the published genealogy and explained the particulars of subscription and purchase. Professor Livergood’s remarks were interrupted by Mr. George Pardee, who argued that those, like himself, in the female lines descending from our common ancestor, the venerable and much esteemed Cockchase Livergood, should be eligible for a discounted price, given their second-class status in the family. There ensued a lively debate among the various members of the male and female branches over the disparity of privileges and appurtenances redounding to both, e.g. the fact that female branch descendants and their spouses are relegated to sitting in the back of the hall and required to drink their coffee in demitasses and eat their luncheon on dessert plates. The latter half of this statement was said in jest and there were some who derived pleasure from it; but the first half was spoken in earnest, as those in the back of the hall were quick to attest. There was no resolution to the debate, and though a vote was suggested under “Roberta’s Rules of Order” (Roberta being Mrs. Roberta Livergood Fuller, who frequently lampoons Parliamentary Procedure in her monthly squibs for Pshaw! magazine), there was no consensus as to whether a vote in actuality would be taken, since descendants of the female lines are allotted only one half of one vote and must attend our annual meetings in a veritable swarm if they are to ever hold sway.
Professor Elisha Livergood completed his appeals and sat down, but missed his chair and landed on the floor, this gluteal mishap being accompanied by shrieks and caws of uncharitable laughter. There followed a motion that the assembly adjourn for lunch, the motion being offered by the perpetually famished Mr. Stewart Livergood of Usquepaug, Rhode Island. It being only 9:59 o’clock, the motion went unseconded and Mr. Stewart Livergood proceeded to chank a corned beef sandwich on rye bread in lip-smacking defiance of prandial propriety.
HON. DUDLEY LIVERGOOD of Pawcatuck, Connecticut, PROFESSOR ELISHA LIVERGOOD of Providence, Rhode Island, and MR. DELBERT LIVERGOOD of Fall River, Massachusetts, were appointed a nominating committee over the objections of members of the female branches and three newly arrived young men who stood in the doorway with folded arms for a quarter of an hour and eventually demanded a say at the meeting by virtue of their bastard lineage to Cockchase Livergood by John Livergood, Cockchase’s great grandson, and a fecund whore named Beriah Scrants. The Sergeant-at-Arms was promptly awakened and encouraged to remove the three toughs from the premises, though an arrangement was ultimately effected in which the three would be permitted adjunct membership to the body and afforded one quarter of a vote (upon payment of one quarter of the required annual membership dues) but were exiled to one of the children’s tables at the luncheon, whereupon President Fred R. Livergood adjourned the formal meeting for lunch.
I observed in that interim that Mrs. Markham was not very observant, assuming — correctly as it were — that partaking of victuals did not necessitate the taking of notes, but I should like to make the brief interpolative comment that Miss Clementina Denslow and Mr. Edgar Livergood should think twice before pursuing a romantic attachment to one another until it can be fully established that Cockchase Livergood is their only mutual ancestor, so as to spare themselves the heartache of bearing imbecilic children.
THE AFTERNOON SESSION OF THE LIVERGOOD FAMILY REUNION was called to order by President Fred R. Livergood at 1:15 o’clock, whereupon the nominating committee presented its slate of officer candidates for unanimous approval, this list including MRS. FANNIE FLOWERS of Warwick, Rhode Island, descended from one of the female branches, for the office of vice president, the nomination being viewed as “highly commendable” and “a long time coming” by celebratory members of those branches, and “odious” and “anarchic” and “a splat of pig dung upon our fine Livergood family escutcheon” by members of the male lines, who immediately offered up the name of HOWARD LOOMIS LIVERGOOD of Westerly, Rhode Island, to contend for that selfsame office. A vote was held, and a tally made, with all parties voting along branch lines and the three intrusive bastards who were descended from that whelping whore voting on the side of Mrs. Flowers. The final totals for the office of vice president stood as follows:
Mrs. Fannie Flowers: 28 ¾ votes
Mr. Howard Loomis Livergood: 53 votes
Abstaining: 4 votes
When the results were announced, supporters of Mrs. Flowers proceeded to rip apart a chair. Order was restored when Mr. Loomis Livergood, in an act of familial reconciliation, withdrew his name, and Mrs. Flowers was elected by acclamation. In the spirit of family unity and togetherness, Mrs. Mary Blunt Livergood led the assembly in a verse of “O Joy! O Bliss! O Livergood!” although several disrespectful youths were clearly heard singing, “Oh Joy! Oh Piss! O Liverwurst!”
THERE FOLLOWED SEVERAL SHORT ADDRESSES to the body as noted below:
MR. WINTHROP LIVERGOOD of New York City, New York, delivered an address entitled, “Mr. Cockchase Livergood and his early home in England.”
MR. DOANE WALLACE of Hartford, Connecticut, spoke on “Mr. Cockchase Livergood and his early home in Scotland.”
Near fisticuffs ensued over the competing claims, but amity between Messrs. Livergood and Wallace was quickly restored when the two gentlemen were reminded by Miss Madeleine Livergood that Jesus was watching them and passing judgment upon their behavior from His celestial throne.
MRS. JETTIE LIVERGOOD RABBITT of Barrington, Rhode Island, began to speak on “Mr. Cockchase Livergood and his invention of the potato masher,” but was silenced by a chorus of hoots and catcalls from the floor by those who annually reject the claim. There followed unkind charges that Mrs. Livergood Rabbitt was mentally unsound. She was compelled to flee the room in tears, and when she returned an hour later she stumbled and flannelled her words with obvious inebriety, and vowed “retaliation on those who would so malign and maltreat me.”
MR. HAYDEN LIVERGOOD of Cranston, Rhode Island, offered “A tribute to the name of Livergood,” the speaker itemizing moments of historic achievement in which Livergoods were active participants, notably the burning at the stake in Canterbury, England, in 1566 of Henry Livergood for being both a Protestant and keeping a miniature family of doll people. Also mentioned by Mr. Livergood in this fascinating study of famous Livergoods throughout history was Charles Livergood, witness to Burgoyne’s surrender. By all accounts, Charles was dispatched to take the news to General Washington but got turned around and ended up in Spanish Florida, where he took up the ways of the Seminole. More recently, the publisher John Crocker Livergood was famously set last year to publish Mark Twain’s collection of essays, Things I Have Said for which God Should Punish Me upon My Death if There Were, in Fact, a God, the publication of which was halted by judicial injunction sought by the Women’s League of Christian Decency.